It’s All in my Head (and my Excel Sheet…and in my Email Somewhere…)

You can hold thirty positions, strategies, and exit plans in your head. But don’t expect anyone to carry them forward.

I keep hearing a different version of the same story. Distribution happens, principal isn’t responding, no one from the family has reached out. For that matter, no one knows who to contact. Or best case the family knows part or all of the picture but has no understanding of the exit strategy, so fire sale of the assets.

I’ve posted a couple of times in the last month about the family office gap and how modern wealth has gotten more complex. Sure, maybe the principal can keep track in his or her head… the strategies, exit plans, and contacts. But it sets up for massive continuity friction. And to be clear, this isn’t just a death thing. The mental load of holding it all is real while you’re very much alive. And don’t forget those insurance payments, K-1 filings, or tracking those investor updates.

There are a few people who are truly organized but most are somewhere in a process they began but never finish. There is a big gap between “we’re organized” and “actually organized.” There may be a plan, legal work done…wills, trusts and entities. It may feel done. What often is overlooked is the where.

The findable layer is often where the mess is. Usually it is something like a list of LLC bank logins, a platform holding the operating agreement, angel positions in a spreadsheet, a seed phrase in a drawer, a fund emailing capital calls to one inbox, mineral rights, property three entities deep. The trust says who inherits the LLC but it’s silent on where the LLC actually lives.

A list of accounts is only so helpful. What was the reasoning? What was the exit plan? Who was that founder? Who managed that SPV? The paperwork records what you own but it never records why you bought it or what you were waiting for. The map has to carry intent, not just coordinates. The attorney builds the structure that governs the assets. Someone still has to maintain the map of what they are, where they sit, why they exist, and how to reach them. For families in the gap (without a staff of people who own this), no one owns that map; it lives informally in memory and inbox.

When something happens, the family isn’t executing a plan, they’re running an investigation, months after the one person who understood it can no longer be asked.

The simple spouse test: if something happened to me today would my partner know where to start? Or would it begin a painful, drawn out process of searching, understanding, and perhaps even entire positions going dark because no one knew they existed or where to look.

Turns out, it isn’t that complicated, it’s just a matter of getting everything in one place and making sure the people that need to, know just where to go to get the complete picture and context.